Jeremy Roenick — a studio analyst for the network — plans to be at both.

"We're trying to keep him busy and keep him off the streets and out of the pubs," NBC executive producer Sam Flood said, jokingly, about Roenick. "So he's traveling directly from Los Angeles to New York to be part of both games in a back-to-back.

More Information

Sound bytes

1 ESPN continues to show ignorance of devout tennis fans — and, let's face it, those are the only ones watching these days — in its coverage of Grand Slam events. The network force-feeds studio analysis when live matches are available, and its tennis roster has been at the level of the Houston Astros ever since Mary Carillo was pushed out. ESPN needs to keep Chris Fowler, John McEnroe and Chris Evert, and rebuild the rest of the franchise.

2 Richard Sherman has received more than his share of attention this week after his abrasive postgame interview Sunday with Fox's Erin Andrews. While few are condoning Sherman's conduct, for which he has apologized, Andrews lost a chance for a career-defining moment when her producer instructed her to throw it back to the booth. "It started crossing over a line that I did not want to see us go," producer Richie Zyontz said. Could Andrews have handled the situation? We'll never know.

3 Former WTMM (104.5 FM) drive-time host Bruce Jacobs, who has moved back to Phoenix, is doing a two-hour online show at noon Mondays. The program is streamed through the website of the Hudson Register-Star and could expand to two or more days a week, according to Jacobs, who also has been doing some fill-in work in the Tucson area.

"We think Jeremy (who had a 20-year NHL career) used to play pretty well on back-to-backs as long as the coaches kept him under curfew. That's the care we have at NBC, feeding and caring of our great Jeremy Roenick."

Roenick, 44 and five years removed from his playing days, understands he isn't going to get much sleep.

That's the price to be the only member of NBC's crew to enjoy the warmth of southern California on one day, then endure the brisk air at Yankee Stadium less than 12 hours later.

"My schedule has been pretty crazy over the last couple weeks," Roenick said. "Sam pieced it together perfectly — to keep me busy and to keep me in the air and on the airwaves.

"So I get to L.A. I start doing all my prep stuff on Saturday. I get out to the game, work the game, jump on the charter, hopefully get a couple hours sleep, check into the hotel and zip right out to Yankee Stadium. ... It's going to be a lot of running around, a lot of talking, and not too much sleep, but it's pretty tough to sleep with all this fun stuff going on."

Roenick will stay in New York, as well as most of Sunday's NBC crew, to call Wednesday night's Rangers-Islanders game from Yankee Stadium.

"His personality fits well in doing fun things like this," Flood said. "His life is an adventure. He's Walter Mitty, he's just this bigger-than-life cosmic character that is fun to do different things with. He's a different character, so let's do a different thing with him."

NBC has experienced ratings success with the NHL Winter Classic, played annually on New Year's Day. That and the Heritage Classic, played in Canada, usually are the league's only ventures into playing hockey in front of NFL-sized crowds.

The NHL decided to test the icy waters of the outdoor games a half-dozen times. In addition to the three in the next week along with the Winter Classic and Heritage Classic (to be played March 2 in Vancouver), the Penguins and Blackhawks collide March 1 at Chicago's Soldier Field.

"We've got to see how this plays out this year," Flood said. "The NHL obviously is going to study it and see how it plays, and we'll look at the ratings and we'll look at where we all are.

"Until you try something, you don't know how it's going to be, so it's not worth guessing whether it's the greatest thing ever or maybe we've gone too far. We'll see, and hopefully it's the greatest thing ever and we continue to have some fun like this."